Strategist: Kologarn

*mutters darkly* Slow internet, sitting out of raids this week, poor weather for going out... Which means more Strategists this week!

A little known fact about Kologarn - Brann Bronzebeard wiped on him. So you better read carefully and not repeat the dwarven explorer's mistake. In addition to this, Kologarn is a mandatory boss, whom you need to kill in order to reach the Keepers' sanctums. And then Yogg-Saron. His dead body will become the bridge to the Observation Ring, and Ulduar's archivist - Auriaya. Body crafted personally by Ignis the Furnace Master, who hopefully lies dead by his forge by the time you get to Kologarn. You are quite a decimating group of raiders, aren't you? :)

Trash

Kologarn's trash is part of a group of trash he shares with the Assembly of Iron and Algalon. For reference, check Assembly of Iron: Trash. 's all there.

Kologarn

Careful when spawning Kologarn. About 2-3 seconds after a player passes the threshold, Kologarn will emerge from the random hole he is lurking in, and be ready for action. Better not spawn him at all, unless you are ready to go.

The fight is pretty straight-forward, and Kolo is often referred to as the easiest boss in Ulduar. This being said, wiping on him is still entirely possible. His body (named 'Kologarn') and both of his arms (named, unimaginatively 'Left Arm' and 'Right Arm') are three separate entities for targeting purposes. That is, you can stand right in the middle of the body and still target either arm. Or you can stand under one of the arms and still target the other one. AoE spells and spells with semi-AoE effects (e.g. Cleave) will hit all 3 entities.

Normally the fight will go like this: All the DPS nukes the Right Arm until it dies. A free tank picks the Rubbles that spawn after an Arm's death and keeps them away from the melee, while all the ranged DPS AoEs them down. The melee, followed by the ranged DPS after they are done with the adds, switches to Kologarn's body. Left Arm remains untouched. As soon as the Right Arm respawns, your DPS switches to it (remember, melee, you don't need to move to attack the Arms) and the process repeats.

As long as the Right Arm is alive (be careful here, Kologarn's Right Arm is actually to your left) it will use Stone Grip every so often. By default, you will be DPSing this Arm as long as it's up (and then again when it respawns), so no adjustments will be necessary. The Healers will need to make sure the people gripped (1 on Normal, 3 on Heroic) are healed well for the several seconds it takes your DPS to free them. If you use Grid (or any other raid frames addon that allows you add a certain debuff), make sure you add Stone Grip so you can see the grabbed targets.

The Left Arm will use Shockwave every now and then. It is best to ignore this Arm, heal through its raid-wide AoE and keep on DPSing the Right one.

Kologarn himself has a few things you actually need to keep an eye on. His Overhead Smashes will force tank rotation (not an issue on Normal however, as the debuff lasts only 6 seconds). Switching tanks every 2 stacks is the general way of doing it. Due to the physical nature of the attack, it can be dodged or parried, which means that the debuff Crunch Armor has a chance to actually fall off. Usually the tank that is not soaking Kologarn's hits is the one that goes to take care of the Rubbles spawned by a dead Arm. You might have a third tank in the group on Heroic. If that's the case, it's best to assign two tanks to rotate on Kologarn, and one to be ready for adds.

Focused Eyebeam is where most people fail... a little or a lot. On random intervals throughout the fight, Kologarn will gave a raid warning to a random raid member. It says something like "Kologarn focuses his eyes on you". At this point two eyebeams will spawn around you, and will attempt to converge on top of you. The beams won't hurt you for the ~2 seconds it takes them to converge - this is the time to drop all casting and run away. If your spellcasters are roughly stacked in the middle of the room, you should run to either left or right (depending on which one is closer) and then around the back of the room, to the other side. This way you won't drag the beams through any other Healers or ranged DPS. The eyebeams will never target melee as long as there is a sufficient number of ranged.

Stone Shout is a raid-wide AoE if both Arms are dead at the same time. Not a big problem. Petrifying Breath is Kologarn's "make-sure-you-have-a-tank-in-melee-range" spell.

Every time you kill an Arm, Kologarn will lose 15% of his health. This being said, it might be easier to perform the "DPS Right Arm, Body, Right Arm, Body..." until his health goes down to 30% or below (with both Arms alive), then stop DPS on his body and just burn the two Arms. This will grant you achievement, and might be easier to accomplish since the Left Arm will probably be low on health from all the DPS.

Achievements

Disarmed - Destroy both of Kologarn's Arms within 12 seconds of each other, and then kill Kologarn. To earn credit, you will need to kill Kologarn before his Arms respawn. Required for Glory of the Ulduar Raider.

With Open Arms - Defeat Kologarn without killing his Arms. Be careful with your AoE abilities, as they will damage the Arms as well, and you don't want that. Whenever the Right Arm grabs somebody, DPS it just long enough for it to release the player(s) (around 20% of its health), and then switch back to the body. This is a DPS race, because the fifth squeeze will usually force you to kill the Arm.

If Looks Could Kill - Defeat Kologarn without any raid member being hit by Focused Eyebeams. Fairly straight-forward, albeit hard achievement. You might want to move a few of your spellcasters to melee range, especially if they are not good at avoiding the beams. Leave a decent number in the back, however, so the beams don't attack your melee and ruin the achievement.

Rubble and Roll - Defeat Kologarn with 25 Rubble creatures alive. The text is misleading - it should be read as "... with 25 Rubble creatures spawned throughout the entire encounter". This means you need to kill an Arm(s) 5 times before killing Kologarn.

Champion of Ulduar - Defeat Kologarn on your first try for this lock-out period, without anyone in the raid dying. This shouldn't be hard, just be mindful of people being squeezed, eyebeams, and Rubble adds going loose.

Comments

Comment by Blackboy0

Now once my Guild starts doing Ulduar, I might be able to use this >.< *Mutters about a crappy guild*

Comment by Kaiou

on 2009-07-28T18:54:16-05:00

"Normally the fight will go like this: All the DPS nukes the Right Arm until it does."

Dies.

Yes, I'm in a correcting mood today >:]

Apart from my spelling QQ, nice strategy. =) I wish my guild would do With Open Arms. It's a funny achievement to link "Welcome to the guild ". (it feels a bit lame linking an achievement you don't actually have, I try to prevent that :))

Comment by Crimor

Comment by blackiceadept

So... he can't silence casters? *sigh* How many times must my raid leader spread lies?

Comment by Giliandrix

on 2009-07-28T19:45:58-05:00

"Every time you kill an Arm, Kologarn will lose 15% of his health. Every time the Arm regrows, he will gain those 15%"

What? Also

"This is a DPS race, because the fifth squeeze will usually force you to kill the Arm or just heal through the impressive damage it deals to the grabbed people]."

You can't heal through the damage it deals to the grabbed people, they will be squeezed lifeless =(

Comment by ArgentSun

on 2009-07-28T22:01:01-05:00

"Every time you kill an Arm, Kologarn will lose 15% of his health. Every time the Arm regrows, he will gain those 15%"

Say, Kologarn and both of his Arms are at 100% health. You kill one Arm (assuming 0 damage to the Body), and Kologarn's health (his Body's) will drop to 85%. Say, you get the Body down to 75% before the Arm regrows. As soon as it (the Arm) comes back, Kolo's health with go to 90% (restoring those 15% it lost when you killed the Arm).

You can't heal through the damage it deals to the grabbed people, they will be squeezed lifeless =(

Comment by tigersclaw69

When an arm is destroyed he will lose 15% off his health. But i've never heard of when they regrow restoring that lost health... unless its a heroic thing. ive only killed him on normal.

Comment by Dorean

on 2009-07-28T23:21:07-05:00

"Every time you kill an Arm, Kologarn will lose 15% of his health. Every time the Arm regrows, he will gain those 15%"

Say, Kologarn and both of his Arms are at 100% health. You kill one Arm (assuming 0 damage to the Body), and Kologarn's health (his Body's) will drop to 85%. Say, you get the Body down to 75% before the Arm regrows. As soon as it (the Arm) comes back, Kolo's health with go to 90% (restoring those 15% it lost when you killed the Arm).

You can't heal through the damage it deals to the grabbed people, they will be squeezed lifeless =(

if he finishes squeeze without dropping people he casts Squeezed Lifeless on the people he throws, killing them instantly.

However, if someone is killed during the regular squeeze or sufficient damage is dealt to his arm.. he drops everyone without murdering the lot.

Comment by Corgan

on 2009-07-29T04:59:43-05:00

Say, Kologarn and both of his Arms are at 100% health. You kill one Arm (assuming 0 damage to the Body), and Kologarn's health (his Body's) will drop to 85%. Say, you get the Body down to 75% before the Arm regrows. As soon as it (the Arm) comes back, Kolo's health with go to 90% (restoring those 15% it lost when you killed the Arm).

I'm going to have to say I have never (ever) seen this happen, on 10 or 25.

After 8 or 10 seconds, the person is crushed and thrown for 80k+. (You can actually bug out the arm by using Guardian Spirit on the person in the arm on 10 man, and he wont grab anybody else. Or at least you could.)

Comment by pezz

After 8 or 10 seconds, the person is crushed and thrown for 80k+. (You can actually bug out the arm by using Guardian Spirit on the person in the arm on 10 man, and he wont grab anybody else. Or at least you could.)

Hopefully to end the confusion completely, the damage Kologarn does to the gripped targets before this 80k hit can be and must be healed through. Hopefully the problem with healing someone through that 80k hit presents itself without too much explanation.

And I was also under the impression that the health he lost regrowing his arm gets lost for good, but my experience with Kologarn was as a healer, and only one time on normal (never on heroic) and I have to say I never pay a great deal of attention to how much health the boss has at any given time when I'm healing.

Comment by Slimda

on 2009-07-29T05:56:04-05:00

Careful when spawning Kologarn. About 2-3 seconds after a player passes the threshold, Kologarn will emerge from the random hole he is lurking in, and be ready for action. Better not spawn him at all, unless you are ready to go.

False. Crossing the threshold will instantly spawn the boss (but he uses 2-3 seconds to rise up), but standing there will not aggro him. You have to be far much closer to actually aggro the boss. MUCH closer.

Every time you kill an Arm, Kologarn will lose 15% of his health. Every time the Arm regrows, he will gain those 15%.

False. Once he loses those 15%, they stay "lost", but the arm regrowths without any regain in health.

:-)

Comment by ArgentSun

on 2009-07-29T09:47:11-05:00

Interesting...

I'll fix all that stuff somewhat soon.

Comment by Delterius

on 2009-07-29T09:54:54-05:00

(be careful here, Kologarn's Right Arm is actually to your left)

This can wipe raids.

Comment by transientcylon

on 2009-08-07T09:22:41-05:00

(be careful here, Kologarn's Right Arm is actually to your left)

This can wipe raids.

Having a dyslexic raid leader doesn't help either. Warrior tanks should also not use challenging shout (think that's the aoe taunt one) as it will trigger his petrifying breath attack even if a tank is in range.

Comment by Swishee

on 2009-09-01T07:35:08-05:00

So... he can't silence casters? *sigh* How many times must my raid leader spread lies?

Kologarn, infact DOES silence casters. It is not mentioned in this strategy guide. Overhead smash also has a silence mechaism to it. The reason you do not notice this is because almost all melee and tank abilites are instant cast. We found this out the hard way when we were learning the fight about 4 months ago.

What we did was to put two ranged DPS outside his melee range sinec our healers were having trouble dodging the eyebeams. Guess what? Overhead smash silenced them, which obviously lead to us wiping.

Also a couple notes to the 10 man version. The crunch armor debuff DOES fall off before he casts overhead smah again, making tank switches unecessary on 10 man. This change was made in a hotfix because of tanking issues happening. The MT would get the second stack of Crunch armor just as an arm died, and chaos endured as the MT and OT would try to switch tank targets.

Also, if your group is doing the cycle of Right Arm--> Body---> Right Arm body your OT can kill the adds off by himself between two arm kills.

Although this is not recommended for learnning groups, this is our strat for Kologarn on 10.

Kill right arm, two ranged DPS AoE adds to about 5-10% and the OT finishes them off, in the meantime, other DPS work on the left arm. When the left arm goes down, repeat the above with the rubble. This strategy along with the incedental AoE going on the fight ensures that the boss dies in 5 arm kills. To top it off, you get the 25 rubble spawned achievement. It almost makes me wonder why it would be an achievement at all, since this infact is an easier way to kill him once your group learns the fight. Reminds me of the Assembly of Iron achievement for killing Brundir last.

Comment by chetoos

on 2009-09-05T20:56:15-05:00

this guy is a walking python reference, with the "none shall pass" and "Im invincible!", and the other two quotes I quoted above.

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